It is time to make three-person babies
制造三亲婴儿的时候到了
By James Gallagher
It is time to start making babies from three people, according to scientists advising the UK's fertility(生育力) regulator(监管者).
The move has been described as "historic(有历史意义的)", and the regulator will make its decision next month.
Doctors want to make babies from three people to prevent diseases that starve(饿死) the body of energy, leading to brain damage(脑损伤), muscle wasting(肌肉萎缩) and heart failure(心力衰竭).
However, fresh evidence suggests it will fail in one in eight pregnancies(怀孕).
Three-person IVF(试管受精) replaces the defective(有缺陷的) power packs(电源组) in the mother's egg - called mitochondria(线粒体) - with healthy ones from a donor(捐赠者) woman.
A three-person baby has most of its genetic inheritance(基因遗传) from its parents, but also a tiny amount from the donor woman.
Parliament(议会) has already legalized(合法化) the controversial(有争议的) procedure, and a baby has been born from the technique in Mexico.
However, there have been calls for extra checks on the science before it goes ahead in the UK.
Prof Robin Lovell-Badge, one of the researchers who reviewed the evidence, said the moment had come.
"We're not going to learn much more now unless you try it out for real basically - it's at that stage," he said.
"There's no reason why it shouldn't go ahead now, but do it cautiously on selected patients where the risk of having a badly affected child is very high."